TRAVEL Plymouth, The Home Of The Mayflower Voyage As an island country, Great Britain does have quite a large coastline to investigate, and visitors to our shores have many towns and beaches to choose from. When you think of seaside towns to visit your first thoughts probably go to Brighton, Blackpool or Bognor Regis, but if you go a little further down the alphabet from B to P, you come to the historic city of Plymouth, that has so much to see and do. Plymouth is located on the south coast of Devon, about 193 miles from London, and is well supported by rail and road links. Plymouth is a university town which mixes all the benefits of a modern city, with the more historic Barbican area, which is Plymouth’s delightful old port full of cobbled streets, Elizabethan warehouses and specialist shops, cafés and restaurants. Plymouth also has a lido, a plethora of picturesque walks, and views, and all the expected water activities ranging from a relaxing fishing trip to a high-octane jet ski safari to delight visitors, and if you want to go a little farther afield, is also only 25 minutes away from the breath-taking scenery of Dartmoor National Park. To my shame, I have never been to Plymouth, and so it was with great expectation that I drove past the sign welcoming me to the ‘Ocean City’, and followed the signpost directing me to The Barbican. The Barbican is the old port area and forms the heart of the city’s heritage with the oldest buildings and the most historical stories. Our first port of call was one of the oldest surviving buildings
Smeaton’s Tower
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AMERICAN IN BRITAIN
in The Barbican, The Elizabethan House. This house was built for a cost of £150 in the late 1500’s when Plymouth was a thriving port, (£150 was coincidently the same amount of money spent building the Mayflower), and despite the heavy German bombing in World War II and a demolition order in the 20th Century, it still stands today having undergone a major restoration as part of Plymouth’s Mayflower 400 commemorations. History can be a little dry at times, but visitors to the house enjoy an immersive and authentic journey through Plymouth’s history under the watchful guidance of both a human guide and the spiritual ‘voice’ of the house. This ‘spirit’, who herself lived in the house, takes you through the history and the various residents of the house, so you have a real feel for what life was like over the past few centuries. This history is related to visitors via a multi-sensory audio-visual tour, and the hour-long tour truly flew by. Having spent a very enjoyable hour at the house, we walked the very short walk down to the quayside to see the Mayflower Steps from where the Pilgrims are believed to have finally left England aboard the Mayflower, on 6th September 1620, to cross the Atlantic Ocean to settle in North America, finally landing at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. Although the actual steps the pilgrims left from are long gone, there are a number of memorials commemorating the voyage, including a granite block bearing the ship’s name, a commemorative portico with Doric columns of Portland stone that was built in
1934 (flanked by British and American flags), and historical information, and it is hard not to stand here and look out over the Plymouth Sound and think about the bravery of those original pilgrims as they set out in 1620 into the unknown on a ship which was, reportedly, very leaky! The best effort by local historians to place the actual site of the Mayflower finally casting off is roughly where a Victorian public house, the Admiral MacBride, now stands, and is a perfect place to raise a toast to those hardy souls. Having seen where the Mayflower set sail, it is a short walk (up a steep hill!) to Plymouth Hoe, a large south-facing open public space famous for a game of bowls! It was on Plymouth Hoe that the apocryphal story relates that Sir Francis Drake played his famous game of bowls in 1588, whilst waiting for the tide to change before sailing out with the British Fleet to engage and defeat the Spanish Armada. In the summer months, The Hoe is a lovely place to soak up the sun and enjoy a picnic whilst gazing out over the Plymouth Sound, and soaking up Plymouth’s history. Prominently sited near the Royal Citadel, at the eastern end of the Hoe, is Smeaton’s Tower, which is the upper portion of John Smeaton’s Eddystone Lighthouse, which was originally built on the Eddystone Rocks (located 14 miles to the south) in 1759, and moved to The Hoe, stone by stone in 1877, when it was discovered that the sea was undermining the rocks it was
Elizabethan House
